Do you believe in miracles?

I have a Team Phoenix sister who was diagnosed with t-AML from her breast cancer treatment a month after I was diagnosed with mine. Michelle recently completed all her pre-transplant tests and will be admitted to the hospital (a different hospital than mine) tomorrow to begin her intensive chemo in preparation for her transplant next week. When I was talking to Michelle this weekend about her plans and about my next steps (the clinical trial), she asked why I had to have another bone marrow biopsy on Monday, so soon after the last one. I explained that this was just a baseline for the clinical trial and Michelle said she had high hopes that the results from this biopsy would be good and I'd be back in remission. I said that was impossible, as I haven't had anything different treatment wise since my last biopsy and that the very best I could hope for was that things hadn't gotten worse. My blasts in the aspirate were between 5-10% and I was hoping that maybe my results would still be in the single digits. If higher, I was very much afraid of what that would mean.

So on Monday I had the pre-clinical trial biopsy, which was kind of a mini one. They only took aspirate (liquid marrow) and didn't need to take a chunk of bone like usual. I was pretty excited because I'm still in pain from biopsy #5 and this has so far been less painful.

Thursday (tomorrow) is an appointment with Dr. Atallah tomorrow, following twice weekly labs. My counts continue to drop, but I've avoided transfusions still. And when my phone rang this afternoon and the caller ID said Froedtert Hospital, I assumed it was a reminder for tomorrow's appointment. When it was Dr. Atallah on the other line and not the scheduling department, my stomach dropped.

He asked how I was doing and I said, "you tell me--you're the one with my test results." And he laughed and said, "You're doing well. You're doing very well. Your marrow shows that you have no leukemia." And I immediately said, "how is that even possible?" So he explained:

First of all, blasts in and of themselves are not necessarily bad. The only way to make new blood cells is through blasts (blood cell precursors). There are four things measured in a bone marrow biopsy. To be considered in remission, however, blasts need to be less than 5%. At the time of my last appointment, they only had the first two measures back.
The March biopsy showed:
Cellularity of 5-10%
Aspirate of 5%
Flow cytometry: nothing abnormal
Cytogenetics: only one of the 11 cells examined had any cytogenetic changes

The April biopsy only examined the aspirate, which he called the gold standard. And my aspirate showed less than 1% blasts present.

He discussed this with the pathologist and Dr. Hamadani (the transplant doctor) and they all agree that I am back in remission!!! He said the "worst case scenario" is that I am in remission with minimal residual disease (MRD), but it's possible I don't even have that. Either way, I am ready to go to transplant!

I told Dr. Atallah I had to go do a happy dance, and he said I should, as he'd done one early in the day. :)

It still seems surreal, but I have a new schedule of appointments. Friday I start the pre-transplant tests, including CT scans and pulmonary function tests. The echocardiogram that I had last week will be within 30 days of transplant, so I don't have to re-do that. If all continues to go well, I will now be admitted to the hospital on April 29 to begin ablative chemo, with my transplant date of May 5.

If a miracle is possible, all the warm thoughts and wishes and prayers have most definitely put me into remission. Thank you--every one of you! It's a very, very good day--so good, in fact, that I was barely bothered by the extreme cold and wind on our bike ride today, marking halfway through #30daysofbiking.

p.s. Best part--no chemo next week!